<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>The Principles of Catastrophe by OneHandedBooks</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24424225">The Principles of Catastrophe</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneHandedBooks/pseuds/OneHandedBooks'>OneHandedBooks</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magicians (TV), The Magicians - Lev Grossman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Timelines, Depression, Episode 101.1, Episode 101.2, Multi, Overdose, Suicidal Thoughts, The Magicians Book / Show Remix, Time Loop, volunteer tomato</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 07:08:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,533</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24424225</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneHandedBooks/pseuds/OneHandedBooks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"When Quentin first came to Fillory, in the very first timeline, he was running from grief. His best friend had died, tragically. A victim of [his] own vices." -Jane Chatwin, Episode 502</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh, Quentin Coldwater/Margo Hanson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>41</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Quentin 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Quentin 1</strong>
</p><p>Is he asleep? No, because he’s on the floor and that angle’s not right and there’s blood under his nose and pink foam at his lips. His blue lips. And.</p><p>No. </p><p>“El! Eliot! Oh fuck. No, come on.”</p><p>Quentin kneels at Eliot’ side, pressing desperate hands down against his sternum again and again and again. Forcing his air into silent lungs. There’s blood on his own mouth now. El’s blood- gritty with enchanted chemicals and bitter with his last breath.</p><p>There’s Margo’s wailing and Alice’s frantic casting. Quentin thinks he sees Alice’s fingers spark a deadly electric blue that limns the bones beneath, but then she’s sobbing and Margo’s holding her up and all that eldritch color fades away.</p><p>There’s a pointless trip to the Brakebills infirmary with Professor Lipton pointlessly reminding them that she’s also a “real doctor” and real doctors rewind overdoses all the time.</p><p>Q is calm. He thinks he is. He’s sure he should feel something…more, though. His eyes are wet, but his face is still. Distance. Detachment. Disassociation, Dr. London might have diagnosed, with her air of gentle chiding.</p><p>Lipton spikes Eliot’s heart with adrenaline, slams the plunger home with her palm. She tries to snare his shade back with some sort of esoteric equipment Dean Fogg runs in with. Julia’s talent is for natural magic and she bargains for Eliot’s life with all the green in the Sea. Quentin’s discipline is precise and intricate and does not extend to mending a crack in the whole world.</p><p>After everything, there is still Eliot’s cold hand in Q’s warm one.</p><p>Their world is secret, but Fogg extends an exception. Still, El’s parents don’t come to the service. Quentin hates them a little for that.</p><p>In the crumbling cemetery behind the school, Fogg engraves a new headstone with a mournful series of resolute gestures. His graceful magic flares green against the granite when he sets the date that Eliot died.</p><p>Brakebills turns out in force to mourn its dearly departed prince of <em>les bons temps</em>. A slowly snaking line of students throw handfuls of dirt on the casket. Quentin hates them a little for that.</p><p>The five of them remain as dusk falls, their arms around each other- a tangled knot of grief at Eliot’s graveside. It rains, because of course it does. And Alice conjures an enormous shimmering umbrella to shield them, because of course she does. She’s the only one who can. She’s the most powerful of them all now.</p><p>Quentin hasn’t been able to feel his magic for days. It’s like he bled out everything good in Lipton’s makeshift ER. How can he still be alive when he feels so empty?</p><p>The setting sun flares red along the line of the Hudson River, burning up the low edge of the low grey clouds. The light smears across Alice’s magical umbrella like a crime scene.</p><p>When The Beast comes, they’re not ready.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Beast slides stylish through a mirror gone liquid at the back of Practical Applications. He kills Kady and Dean Fogg and half a dozen others before the rest of them even realize he’s in their world. Shocked screams ricochet into silence. Blood and shattered glass on the classroom floor. Fogg’s crushed eyes and crippled hands and cracked neck. One coin spinning in a flutter of blue moths.</p><p>Fueled by clear cold terror, Penny and Alice force the Beast back through the mirror with an instinctive sequence of cooperative gestures and a sing-song spell that flows from them in a language they’ve never spoken and will not remember later.</p><p>Quentin and Julia drive a wooden chair through the mirror’s silvered face like a stake, closing that door for good.</p><p>Of course, there’s always another door. When you need one.</p><p>*    *  *</p><p>Quentin studies Fillory, while Alice studies Fogg. She and Julia and the surviving professors bring his complex wards and shields back up. They use scraps of hedge knowledge gleaned from Kady’s effects to harden their borders further.</p><p>Quentin camps out in the Physical Kids common room, encircled by a shifting skyline of first edition Fillory books, annotated Fillory books, Fillory conspiracy books, Fillory chat room transcripts, bulletin board messages, Reddit threads, journal articles, newspaper archives, auction catalogs, Twitter posts, fanart. Sometimes bits of real information surface as Quentin pans Google for gold.</p><p>Julia brings him more books and Margo brings him more booze and Penny brings him motivating insults. Perversely, that’s what makes the break. Who’s a nerd now, bitch?</p><p>“The Beast is Christopher Plover,” Quentin announces finally.</p><p>He crawls out of his cavern of paper and collapses on the sofa with the rest of them, a bulging notebook held to his chest.</p><p>“Or it’s Martin Chatwin. It’s definitely one of the two of them. Both went missing around the same time, both under suspicious circumstances. But Martin was only a kid so, more likely Plover. I think.”</p><p>The sea of doubtful faces staring back at him tells him that his theory isn’t really finding any traction here.</p><p>Quentin produces a slightly blurry photo enlargement.</p><p>“Here- this is from the Plover Estate website,” he says. “If you zoom in on the bookshelves in one of the pictures of Plover’s library, which, fun fact, the Plover Estate library is actually an expansion of the original house that was built on the grounds of an old…”</p><p>“You will never be a man,” Penny scoffs, shaking his head.</p><p>Quentin shoots him a complex look, part shame, part acid, and presses on. “Yeah, thanks for that. Anyways, if you zoom in you can see these- McCabe, Livingston, Ali, Popper.”</p><p>“Magic 101,” Alice breathes.</p><p>Penny sits forward and grabs the photo, ignoring Quentin’s irritated squeak. “Hold up. There’s Kaminsky too. And Umar. Aurora.” He pauses for effect, but no one has any idea what he’s talking about.</p><p>“I’ve never heard of them,” Alice says finally, equal parts annoyed and intrigued by knowledge unknown to her.</p><p>“That’s because you’re not a traveler,” he answers gently.</p><p>Suddenly they’re all talking over each other.</p><p>“Wait, Plover was a traveler?”</p><p>“…or trying to <em>become </em>a traveler.”</p><p>“…could someone even…?”</p><p>…and I mean, wild magic….”</p><p>…can’t even <em>cast</em> that with human hands. We aren’t strong enough to…</p><p>“…and it’s dangerous as fuck,” Alice concludes, cutting through the noise.</p><p>The room goes quiet again and Quentin nods as additional pieces of the puzzle slot into place. “I think he… uh… he basically turned himself into some kind of supernatural being? With wild magic and bastardized fundamentals. And he got all twisted up and then….”</p><p>“…and then used his power to travel to Fillory?” Penny finishes, unconvinced.</p><p>“Yeah. Something like that.” Quentin sinks back into the sofa, depleted.</p><p>Margo pours him a French 75 from a sweating pitcher on the table and shoves the flute into his hand. “Congratulations,” she says drily. “Now what?”</p><p>Quentin tosses the drink back and winces. Margo’s gone heavy on the, well, the everything. “Now we kill him?”</p><p>“How the fuck do you kill something like that?” Penny asks.</p><p>Quentin pours himself another drink, shakes his head, shrugs.</p><p>“Fantastic.” Penny grumbles.</p><p>Suddenly, he snags Quentin’s drink and vanishes into thin air. Champagne foam patters to the floor where he’d been standing.</p><p>“Dick,” Quentin mutters.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Professor Bigby, the school’s only formerly resident pixie, is an expert in alternate dimensions, battle magic, and, as it turns out, recreational deicide. Penny drops in on her to find out what she knows about powerful, unnatural, dimension-hopping creatures. She’s mourning Fogg fiercely, but it’s not really in her nature to turn down a sympathetic ear. Or a warm body.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Penny comes back from pixieland, flushed and grinning, he has the Rhinemann Ultra. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Plus Bigby's cheery warning that none of them are powerful enough to work the spell alone and that they’re far more likely to blow themselves up with it than to destroy the Beast, even if they do manage to work together.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Step forward. Step back.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Assuming we can work the spell,” Julia argues, “how do we even get to Fillory to use it on the Beast?”</p><p>Four heads turn to look pointedly at Penny, who's reclining in one of the cottage’s loungey loveseats, his long legs thrown over one threadbare arm. He still looks disgustingly pleased with himself. He pretends to ignore them for a moment, pulling one of his filmy patterned scarves through his hands with studied nonchalance.</p><p>“Penny!” Margo prompts.</p><p>“What?” he shoots back.</p><p>Margo lifts an eyebrow at him until he mumbles an apology.</p><p>“I can’t,” he admits finally. “Even if I could actually find it, I don’t know how to take any of you with me.”</p><p>Quentin opens his notebook. “Well, on that topic, there’re these pages from Fillory and Further: Book Six I got on Ebay that say....”</p><p>“Hang on,” Margo interjects. “There is no Fillory Book Six.”</p><p>“I know,” Quentin says shyly, avoiding her skeptical gaze. “But…”</p><p>Margo gestures impatiently for him to hand the pages over. She flips through them, turns them around, scans the edges. “I don’t see an author, Q. Or a publishing mark. And the tone is…different than the other books.”</p><p>Penny side-eyes her.</p><p>“What?” she responds. “I loved those books when I was little.”</p><p>“The story has the same <em>quality</em>, ok,” Quentin counters. He leans over her and taps the top page. “Especially here where it talks about Jane going on an adventure and meeting a questing creature.”</p><p>His eyes flicker to Penny and away. He starts talking faster before Penny can say anything mean.</p><p>“So questing creatures are, uh these beings in Fillory where if you catch them they have to give you anything you wish for. Book Six says Jane caught a questing creature and it gave her….” He takes the page from Margo and turns it over. “Right, a box of buttons that would let the Chatwin children go to Fillory whenever they wanted.”</p><p>Quentin watches time run backwards in the faces of his friends as they contemplate the idea of a magic button that can take you to a magic land.</p><p>“Ember and Umber were the only ones who could summon the kids to Fillory,” Julia objects, frowning. “Bypassing them feels wrong.”</p><p>“Yes, I also liked the books when was little,” she adds, giving Penny a quelling look.</p><p>Penny puts his hands up, defeated.</p><p>“It looks like Jane's sister had the same response, Jules,” Quentin says, reading down the page. “It says she stole the button box from Jane and hid it and refused to tell Jane or anyone else where it was.” He looks around. “The kids spent a lot of time at Plover’s house when they weren’t questing in Fillory. Maybe the buttons are still there somewhere.”</p><p> “So, I guess we’re flying to London?” Julia says.</p><p> </p><p>*       *          *</p><p> </p><p>It turns out to be easier than that.</p><p>The five of them crowd into Margo’s room.</p><p>“Our first year here, Eliot and I made a portal to our favorite pub in London,” she says, putting her hand on the closet doorknob.</p><p>There’s a brief pained silence.</p><p>“So, we just step through,” Quentin encourages softly.</p><p>“And take a cab the rest of the way,” Margo confirms, pushing the door open. “Yeah.”</p><p> </p><p>*          *          *</p><p>Taking the portal feels as gross as Quentin imagines Side-Along Apparation must feel- a squeezing, retching sensation in his <em>actual brain</em>- but at least it’s quick. Trying to explain to the handsome bartender why Eliot’s not with them, however, is five full minutes of hell.</p><p>Margo’s mouth quirks in faint distaste, but she manages to pat the bartender's shaking shoulder awkwardly until they sort themselves out. Then they hail a car and send the magicians on their way. When Quentin looks back through the black cab’s back window, he sees the bartender rubbing at their wet eyes with their palms like a hurt child.</p><p> </p><p>*          *          *</p><p>Quentin is overcome with wonder at the Plover Estate. He can’t help it, really, but it can’t last- that spunsugar sort of joy. When night falls and calls the spirits of the restless dead, the stately manse puts on its ripstop horrorshow.</p><p>It was bad enough, Quentin thinks, as he watches the past play out, to suspect that Christopher Plover, his towering childhood hero, might be the Beast. Worse still to understand now all the reasons how and why. The betrayal is an unimaginable rupture in the foundations of the world. It is absolute zero and it steels his heart to stone.</p><p>They can’t change anything anyway. Can’t save the ghost children from reliving their gruesome fates, though god knows Alice tries her tender-hearted best. But they do get a button in the end, and isn’t that the point of it all?</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Margo hates the library with an unholy passion; nevertheless, she’s the one who unearths a massive cooperative spell that <em>just</em> <em>might</em> juice them all up enough to cast the Rhinemann.</p><p>Quentin does a good imitation of paying attention to her discovery and their friends’ plans to cast the two spells together, but this is revenge, not a group project, and he has no intention of taking them with him now.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>His old college messenger bag really seems ill-suited to an epic adventure but fuck it; it’s what he has. Eliot would have packed something more appropriate, he’s sure. Something fancier, like a vintage British explorer’s rucksack. He stops, hands on the frayed strap of his battered bag. Goddamn it, Eliot. We really need you.</p><p>“Having fun planning your little kamikaze quest, Q?” Eliot asks from the closet mirror. His lavender mouth is streaked black with blood, eyes blank and white as pearls. “Maybe you can catch up to me. If you’re quick enough.  Hurry, hurry.”</p><p>Quentin shakes his head, his mouth a tight line. “You’re not real. Go away.”</p><p>“You wake to sleep,” Eliot purrs as he fades from the mirror. “And take your waking slow.”</p><p>“I feel my fate in what I cannot fear,” Quentin murmurs in automatic response. “I learn by going where I have to go.”</p><p>A pink blur blooms in the doorway behind him.</p><p>“Who are you talking to?” Margo asks sympathetically.</p><p>“No one.”</p><p>“You know you’re not doing this alone, right?”</p><p>“Right, of course,” Quentin answers absently. Should he nick one of Penny’s psychic protection amulets? he wonders. Those are always good to have in a pinch. It might help him really focus in when he’s casting the Rhinneman too. Their research hasn’t been entirely consistent about how the spell <em>actually</em> <em>works</em>.</p><p>“Q? We’re coming with you. <em>I</em> am coming with you.”</p><p>“Yep.”</p><p>“Q.”</p><p>“Yeah no I hear you, Margo, definitely.”</p><p>“Quentin!”</p><p>He looks up, shocked out of his loopworld by her sharp tone. She’s beautiful- in her fury, in her grief. Her red-rimmed eyes are huge in their bruisey hollows. She seems thinner. Almost insubstantial. Or maybe he’s the insubstantial one. He feels like a kite at the tail end of a very long string. High above the world and far and almost free.</p><p>“I loved Eliot too,” Margo states plainly.</p><p>Quentin goes to her when her face crumples, pulls her into his arms, and holds her tight until her tears trail off to hitching breath.</p><p>“You loved him first,” he whispers against her tangled hair.</p><p>It’s the right thing to say. He wishes he could feel it.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>"I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow./I feel my fate in what I cannot fear./I learn by going where I have to go."- The Waking, Theodore Roethke</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Quentin untangles himself quietly from Margo’s embrace. He brushes her damp hair back from her face and pulls the blankets up over her bare shoulder. He really should kiss her goodbye, but if he wakes her it would just… complicate things.</p><p>He stands outside the Physical Kids cottage, shivering in the chilly moonlight. He has everything he needs to cast the Rhinneman in the bag slung over his shoulder. He has his lucky hoodie. He has the Bakelite magic button in its little brass and glass box. It feels heavier than it looks, weighed down with enchantments. He slides his thumb over the lid, flicks it open. He scratches his thumbnail contemplatively across the neat buttonholes, clicking one, two, three, four.</p><p>Is he really and truly going to do this?</p><p>Click one, two, three-</p><p>Quentin presses down on the button and blinks out.</p><p>Brakebills is replaced by dense green forest, spiked through with shimming gold late afternoon light. The air smells of sweet woodsy decay, fresh and clean, and it’s a benediction just to breathe.</p><p>“Holy shit, Fillory is real,” Quentin gasps. “Really real.” For a moment, his sorrow is entirely eclipsed by pure radiant joy. The despairing band around his chest is gone. His eyes are clear again and full of hope.</p><p>“Of course it’s real. You’ve known that since you were a child.”</p><p>Quentin wheels around to find the woman in black. She’s holding an ornate pocketwatch in one gloved hand. She offers the other in greeting.</p><p>“Jane Chatwin. I see you’ve read my book.” </p><p>“No, I…. I mean yes, but only scraps. Wait, <em>you</em> wrote Fillory and Further book six?”</p><p>She nods and looks around expectantly. “Well. I did think there’d be rather more of you. Are the others coming?”</p><p>Quentin shakes his head faintly.</p><p>“Margo? Julia. The tall boy, surely. Edwin was it?”</p><p>“Eliot’s dead.” Quentin replies flatly, elation draining away.</p><p>“That’s unfortunate. Did Martin..?”</p><p>It hits like a blow to the chest, leaving him breathless. Martin. It’s not Plover at all. It’s Martin <em>Chatwin</em>.</p><p>And why not? Quentin shudders with unwelcome sympathy. Made monstrous by a monster. Why wouldn’t he have done anything, <em>anything,</em> to stay in Fillory?</p><p>“…No. It was… before.” He shoves his anxious hands into his pockets to still them.</p><p>Jane regards him closely. “Tell me what you know.”</p><p>“Tell me what to do,” Quentin retorts.</p><p>“I want you to help me,” Jane begins.</p><p>“Yes,” Quentin agrees immediately. “Anything.”</p><p>Anything if it means he can end this now.</p><p>“We have the Rhinneman,” he offers quickly. “Or, <em>I</em> have the Rhinneman. I can kill the Beast.”</p><p>Jane holds out a hand in alarm. “Just hang on a moment, Quentin. Let’s talk….”</p><p>Before she can say anything further, there’s a swirl of leaves and blue light and fluster of dusty wings.</p><p>The Beast steps into the forest through a hole in the world and doffs an invisible top hat to Jane. “Sister mine.”</p><p>“Please don’t do this, Martin.”</p><p>“You never let me have any fun, Janey!” Martin pouts.</p><p>Quentin ignores their well-worn jousting and dumps his bag on the mossy ground, shaking out healing herbs, all purpose goat’s blood, the little book of Last Hope Options.  He finds Bigby’s linen scroll at the bottom and spreads it out on the ground. He pins it down with his foot so he can refer to it as he casts, then stands and brings his hands together in the first gesture.</p><p>“Quentin stop!” Jane shouts.</p><p>Quentin shoots her an imploring look. “You have to get back,” he begs. “I can’t stop it now. You need to get back. Get back. Get back!”</p><p>He turns his attention resolutely away from her and starts speaking the spell that will turn every living thing in a twenty foot radius to ash. He groans as energy pours through him. His hands are shaking.</p><p>It hurts. Oh it <em>hurts.</em></p><p>Quentin locks his eyes on Martin, grits his teeth against the pain, and keeps casting. He’s stuttering now, at fingers and tongue, skipping syllables of the spell, dropping all its stitches as it all goes wrong.  He can see his bones through his skin and then the ground through his bones, as the magic he summoned begins to consume him in a crackle of white hot light.</p><p>Martin clicks his tongue in grotesque concern. “Poor sweet boy,” he sighs. “Really, Jane. This has gone on long enough, don’t you think?”</p><p>He reaches easily through the weakening shield of Quentin’s magic with his own and squeezes the life from his body.</p><p>Quentin drops to the leaf strewn earth, blood running from his nose, his eyes, the corner of his mouth.</p><p>Martin gives his corpse an elaborately sarcastic bow, blows Jane a kiss, and disappears again in a blue-tinged ripple.</p><p>“Well hell,” Jane mutters.</p><p>She clicks her pocketwatch open and gently winds the hour hand backwards with the tip of her finger, smiling with cool determination. She needs to alter the timeline and she has a pretty good idea what change to make.</p><p>She kneels to pat Quentin’s bloodied cheek and closes his empty eyes. "Until next time, Q.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Quentin 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Quentin 2</strong>
</p>
<p>Is he asleep? No, because he’s on the floor and…</p>
<p>“Margo? Is that you?” Eliot slurs. His hand lolls out past the end of the bed and he pushes at a toppled champagne bottle with the tips of his fingers. “This one’s empty. We need another.”</p>
<p>He turns his head at an uncomfortable angle and looks quizzically up at Quentin who’s staring down at him with that dear sweet worried puppy expression of his.</p>
<p>He smiles back with his whole body. “Q! My champagne’s broken. Be a darling and get me another, would you? And find Bambi for me.”</p>
<p>“Water,” Quentin tells him, fighting to maintain his best “reluctant adult” expression. “And then I have to tell you about this freaky Fillory dream I had. El, I think we’re in real trouble here.”</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>